Social media strategy is the umbrella term that covers - Social media setup, management, content generation, client query resolution etc. In short, it deals with setting up and running your brand social media account day in and day out
PROBLEMS FACED BY MOST BRANDS
- Inability to post, reply and interact on social media regularly
- Brand’s social media reach and engagement plateaued
- Social media unable to generate leads
- Having difficulties evaluating your effort
- Unable to use social media to its fullest potential
- Social media team throws complicated jargons and graphs but no results
If these issues resonate with you, there is no need to be worried because you in the same boat as large number of brands.
KEY THINGS THAT CAN HELP
- Choose the right platform - With more than 7 social media platforms actively hosting a billion plus users it is imperative to know where to focus and how to make the best out of it. Add to this the ever evolving "algorithms" and changing regulatory landscape, meaning you have to know where to invest and how to make the best out of it. For instance, Twitter and Instagram are both used to drive audience engagements, but can both be used to drive sales?
- Understand your goals - The goals and expectations for your brand page will evolve with time and maturity. For an established brand, the goal is to fend of competition and ensure engagement. For a brand that has recently ventured on social media, the goal is to let their audience know of the new channel
- Target KPI - converting the goals to relevant KPI targets like reach, engagement, follows etc. can help give a direction and clarity to the teams. For instance when you are starting off, reach will be more important, as you mature the usefulness of "reach" as metric may evolve.
- Content generation - What does your audience want? What do you want your audience to see, both are important factors to be explored before deciding the strategy.
- Team - Depending on the platform, goals, content etc. the right team should be formulated, which has the appropriate skills to deliver
- Budget - All of the tenets require investment both in terms of time and money, skimping on it would lead to compromises that render suboptimal results in the future
- Learning and Experimenting - It is important to give time for the strategy to pan out and show results, depending on how mature the account is, the budget, brand popularity etc. it can take anywhere between 4 months to an year for the results to be visible
- Budget - Allocating optimal budget for social media management in terms, time, effort and spending is critical